Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Epidemiology and Hygiene, Italian Workers Compensation Authority (INAIL), Rome, Italy.
Department of Physics and NAST Centre, University of Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy.
Front Public Health. 2022 Sep 20;10:958181. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.958181. eCollection 2022.
This study is part of a project on early hearing dysfunction induced by combined exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and noise in occupational settings. In a previous study, 56 microRNAs were found differentially expressed in exposed workers compared to controls. Here, we analyze the statistical association of microRNA expression with audiometric hearing level (HL) and distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) level in that subset of differentially expressed microRNAs. The highest negative correlations were found; for HL, with miR-195-5p and miR-122-5p, and, for DPOAEs, with miR-92b-5p and miR-206. The homozygous () and heterozygous () variants of the gene hOGG1 were found disadvantaged with respect to the wild-type (), as regards the risk of hearing impairment due to exposure to VOCs. An unsupervised artificial neural network (auto contractive map) was also used to detect and show, using graph analysis, the hidden connections between the explored variables. These findings may contribute to the formulation of mechanistic hypotheses about hearing damage due to co-exposure to noise and ototoxic solvents.
本研究是关于职业环境中挥发性有机化合物 (VOCs) 和噪声联合暴露致早期听力障碍项目的一部分。在之前的研究中，发现接触组工人与对照组相比有 56 个 microRNAs 表达差异。在此，我们分析了这部分差异表达的 microRNAs 中，microRNA 表达与听阈 (HL) 和畸变产物耳声发射 (DPOAE) 水平的统计学关联。我们发现，与 HL 具有最强负相关的 microRNAs 是 miR-195-5p 和 miR-122-5p，与 DPOAEs 具有最强负相关的 microRNAs 是 miR-92b-5p 和 miR-206。与野生型 (WT) 相比，hOGG1 基因的纯合子 () 和杂合子 () 变体在接触 VOCs 导致听力损伤的风险方面处于不利地位。我们还使用无监督人工神经网络 (自收缩映射) 来检测和使用图形分析显示探索变量之间的隐藏连接。这些发现可能有助于建立关于噪声和耳毒性溶剂联合暴露致听力损伤的机制假说。
